What if the population grew to a trillion? Would this population be to heavy for the earth to support? Would the earth fall and where?

I'm open to all the blasting that I think i'm gonna get

Impossible to get that high GSS. If instantly the population became 1 trillion, in a couple days billions would die from lack of water, food and shelter(confronted to the elements such as heat, cold etc...)

It wouldn't be a fun time. Hec, at 30 billion it would be greatly pushing Earth's capacity already!

"Open your eyes, lookwithin. Are you satisfied with the life you're living?" -Bob Marley “The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” -Carl SaganYou are important: Pale Blue Dot

What if the population grew to a trillion? Would this population be to heavy for the earth to support? Would the earth fall and where?

I'm open to all the blasting that I think i'm gonna get

20 billion or so would probably crush the carrying capacity of our planet. We could maybe reach 50 billion if everybody was a vegetarian and we had sustainable food/energy production. Past that.......Things might start to degrade.

Personally I think we have too many people now. Ideal population would be between 500mil-1billion. Then people wouldn't even need to live in the bad areas and climates of the world. Can't humans be smarter than the bacteria in a dish who reproduce till they all die?

What if the population grew to a trillion? Would this population be to heavy for the earth to support? Would the earth fall and where?

I'm open to all the blasting that I think i'm gonna get

Assuming that this is in a period of time when we can easily build over all terrain, and people were spread evenly, the population density would be just over 5000 per square mile. This would make all of the land of Earth into a megacity with the density over most US metro areas.

With the highest population density in Manilla of ~111,000 /sq mile, 1 trillion people would take up just about all of the North American continent at around ~9,000,000 sq miles.

I think that maybe 200 to 300 billion would be reasonable with densely populated, very high tech cities as long as the food could hold up. We'd probably need super advanced agricultural technology and tons of GMO crops. The water would be okay as long as we had plentiful power for desalination and wastewater reprocessing. Would likely be far from pleasant though.

"Open your eyes, lookwithin. Are you satisfied with the life you're living?" -Bob Marley “The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” -Carl SaganYou are important: Pale Blue Dot

Right, some atmosphere escapes every year, and iirc some mass is lost due to the core cooling, though I don't remember the mechanics behind that. Some mass is also gained from space dust, but it's an overall loss.

Relative to the earth as a whole, it's a very minuscule loss though, and very steady, so the mass is steady.

What if the population grew to a trillion? Would this population be to heavy for the earth to support? Would the earth fall and where?

I'm open to all the blasting that I think i'm gonna get

Here is some blasting! A trillion people?! Ridiculous, you can't put an unlimited number of fish in an aquarium or if you put too many rats in a cage they will kill each other, humans will do the same. No matter how advanced our technology gets I can't see the earth supporting more than a lower 10's of billions of people, even that seems unlikely but technology could make it possible but there is a limit.

This is a very real, scary, and likely outcome. Ironically it could also lead to the stagnation of human development.

A genetic divide, and greater separation of society between essentially the have's and the have nots, is inevitable.

If the technology becomes available, this might indeed be true. Legislation will not stop this kind of thing either, wealthy people can just go to some country that does not ban genetic upgrading - which would be excellent business so i reckon there will be countries willing to facilitate just for the added revenue.

Changing peoples genetics against their will (or that of their parents) could be a bigger problem, but also an opportunity.

Schemes like creating a mindless automaton working class obviously come to mind as a rather evil application. Another controversial application could be influencing fertility. Reducing fertility can be a harsh measure but also effective in reducing overpopulation problems.

If you could, for example, somehow genetically modify women in such a way that they cannot have more than 3 children, this would be greatly helpful for places with problematically high fertility rates and no means to support the offspring. On the other hand it would have very limited downsides for western countries where people rarely have over 3 children and it would still allow reproduction at replacement rate or slightly over.

I don't condone altering peoples genetics without them choosing to do so, but realistically it could be a last resort solution if things spiral out of control otherwise.

had basically christians, muslims, and jews not basically freaked out about stem cells.

The opposition to stem cell research was based upon the federal (i.e. tax dollars) funding of this research which is/was reliant on aborted fetuses for stem cells. Creating an industry which needs a steady supply of aborted fetuses to function should "freak out" everyone. Especially when you are forcing EVERYONE to pay for this by giving taxpayer money to for this research.

Very few people who believe in God are freaked out about genetic research. It's the killing and mutilation of aborted fetuses for the "advancement of science" that gets us riled up.

The problem with altering a person's genetics is that it must take place before the person is born, at least for now and for the foreseeable future. That means that the person YOU decide should be genetically altered to some how benefit YOUR society has no say in the matter. This is the creating of a slave race for the sole purpose of serving one or a number of individuals who think they need humans that can do XYZ more efficiently. If you want to and are able to alter your own genetics (or have someone do this for you), then neither I or anyone else really cares - go for it!

TerraForming mars is not out of the ballpark yet. They have proven that there is ice on mars just like they have on the moon. The big issue with mars is that it has very little in the way of atmosphere. The solar winds strip a lot of it away and there is nothing growing on mars to replenish it

If you want to and are able to alter your own genetics (or have someone do this for you), then neither I or anyone else really cares - go for it!

I wonder how that will pan out when it actually becomes feasible.

Genetically altering an adult may seem stuff of science fiction, but perhaps we can actually do it using retrovirusses to infect most cells with little adverse affect but can insert some genetic material.

It could be too late to make any major changes like adding extra fingers or improve intelligence for the individual taking the treatment.

However, these modifications would also be carried out in the reproductive cells. So i could, using this mechanism, alter my own dna having very little result for me, but having huge result for any of my offspring. This would be the equivalent of modifying the dna of a fetus, but without ever touching that fetus.

Currently this is not a big issue because we haven't mapped that much genes yet. We do know of several genes that can be missing or damaged causing ailment, and of some that should not be present to prevent other ailments.

We don't really know how traits like intelligence are genetically encoded yet, but it's likely we will figure this out in the coming decades. At that point there WILL be an ethical problem since it gives people that can afford it genetically superior offspring - either by modifying the fetus or their own gametes if required.

TerraForming mars is not out of the ballpark yet. They have proven that there is ice on mars just like they have on the moon. The big issue with mars is that it has very little in the way of atmosphere. The solar winds strip a lot of it away and there is nothing growing on mars to replenish it

Yes. I honestly believe Mars is the best, and only planet we have in our solar system where we can try to create life. Mercury has barely no atmosphere, and it's distance to the sun results in very high daytime temperatures(close to Venus) and with no atmosphere nighttime temperatures are colder then you'd even find here at Vostok Station in Antarctica which had the lowest recorded temperature on Earth. Around -79 Celsius IIRC.

Venus, the only way we can inhabit it would be in the upper atmosphere(as has been said by many people) or until we develop strong enough materials to deal with the crushing atmosphere & keep our astronauts cool on it's surface with it's deadly runaway greenhouse effect.

Earth, well we live here

Everything after that are gas planets: Jupiter, Uranus, Saturn, Neptune so that's a no-go. It has been debated whether or not when the sun starts expanding if humans could survive on Europa or another of the gas giants moons!

"Open your eyes, lookwithin. Are you satisfied with the life you're living?" -Bob Marley “The universe is a pretty big place. If it's just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” -Carl SaganYou are important: Pale Blue Dot